The Service Employees International Union poured more than $23 million into its campaign to raise the federal minimum wage last year.
The money primarily went to nonprofit groups and public relations firms with the aim of making the effort look like an organic, grassroots movement.
That’s up 35 percent from an estimated $17 million the previous year, according to the union’s annual Labor Department financial reports.
“It has been increasing dramatically every year,” said Michael Saltsman, executive director of the conservative Employment Policy Institute, which tracks the numbers. The union boosted its spending in Chicago alone by more than $1 million, he noted.
Steve Caldeira, president of the International Franchise Association, said the spending would only hurt workers the union says it wants to represent.
“The unfortunate reality of this massive spending campaign is if the unions get their way, small business owners get squeezed out, workers will lose their jobs and the only people who will benefit are the union leaders and the politicians beholden to them,”Caldeira said.
SEIU did not respond to a request for comment.
The investment appears to have paid off so far. The push has gotten considerable media coverage even though the protests have been relatively small with actual workers sometimes hard to find.
Voters in Alaska, Arkansas, Nebraska and South Dakota approved raising their minimum higher than the federal floor of $7.25 an hour through ballot measures last November. Legislatures in 10 other states voted to raise theirs.
On Wednesday, McDonald’s, which has been a major target of the campaign, announced it will raise wages at all of its corporate-owned stores to at least $1 above the federal minimum.
The union has long backed a raise in the minimum wage, which would benefit its members, which include janitors, maintenance workers and related professions that are typically low-paying. A higher minimum also would make it less economical for employers to use non-union labor.
The majority of the union’s money went to fund groups advocating for the raise that portray themselves as representing ordinary workers. The union’s largest donation last year, $3.8 million, went to another union, the Fast Food Workers Committee. According to the committee’s own Labor Department filings, the union has no members and takes in no dues. The SEIU subsidy accounted for almost its entire budget.
The committee’s president, Kendall Fells, was the spokesman for Fast Food Forward, an activist group heavily involved in the push for the higher minimum. A Kendall Fells is also listed on the SEIU’s filing under “disbursements for employees” as a city coordinator with a salary of $137,000.
The Fast Food Forward name appears to have been dropped. The group’s website, fastfoodforward.org, now redirects visitors to a site for a group called Fight For $15. “We are fast food cashiers and cooks, retail employees, child care workers, adjunct professors, home care providers, and airport workers who have come together from all over the country,” the site declares. The site lists no contact information. A March 16 press release identifies Kendall Fells as the organizing director for Fight for $15.
SEIU also provided $2.9 million to the Workers Organizing Committee of Chicago, which was active in the successful campaign to raise the city’s minimum wage to $13. Like the Fast Food Workers Committee, the Chicago group is listed as a union in its federal filings but it has no members and almost all of its funding was from SEIU.
Another $7 million went to various organizing groups in other states or multi-state regions. Working Washington, a Seattle group active in the effort to raise the minimum to $15 in the city, received $2.6 million.
The union also gave $1.3 million to Berlin Rosen, a public relations firm that has been key in crafting the media message that masses of workers have been joining in the movement.
Liberal think tanks and nonprofit groups also have benefited. The Center for American Progress and its various affiliates, which have regularly advocated for a raise, received about $400,000. The Economic Policy Institute, which has produced research extolling the benefits of a raise, received $150,000.
Another $1.7 million went to the Washington-based law firm James & Hoffman, which has been representing McDonald’s workers in labor violation cases, including cases that charge the restaurants violated minimum wage law.
The San Francisco law firm Altshuler Berzon LLP, which is representing McDonald’s workers in similar cases in California, was listed as receiving almost $1.6 million.
